"Tap to wake" is advertised as a feature. Instead of reaching for your power button every time you want to wake up your phone, you simply tap the screen a few times instead. It reduces hand contortion and puts less abuse on the physical button all at the same time.

But maybe you accidentally toggle it more often than you would like, and you would rather do away with the feature entirely than continue to deal with rampant pocket dials and general battery wastage. For you, Android M appears to have added a setting that lets you toggle this feature on and off. Here you can see it under display settings on a Nexus 9, which supports tap to wake out of the box.

Some Reddit users came across this setting at the beginning of the month. In that thread, the setting mistakenly appeared as a search result on a Nexus 5.

Clicking it opens the display settings, where the option to toggle tap to wake is not visible. That's because attempting to utilize this functionality on the Nexus 5 would absolutely devour battery life.

As always, things could change by the time the official Android update arrives later this year.

Comments

is this visible for the n6? I think the ambient display of the n6 murders battery too much, but I would love tap to wake on my n6.

Marcellus1

I was wondering the same thing. It can easily be enabled with root, but stock would be awesome.

Scott Kaforey

Yes it is definitely viable, as it's been available on a lot of custom kernels for quite some time now.

KanishkSingh

If the new devices come with fingerprint sensor, tap to wake wont be of much use, one can simply use the fingerprint sensor to wake the device. But then again not all devices will come with fingerprint scanner.

On the other hand I wonder where will the sensor be on a nexus device? It will be great if they can embed it in the touch screen instead of putting it at the back or using a button in the front.

Suicide_Note

If they could embed it, that would be preferable, but I'd wager it will be on the back of the device.

anon

FP sensor on the back doesn't make sense, if you prefer keeping your phone on the table.

cadtek91

Well I wouldn't want it on the front, making a mess of the design on the front. LG already has buttons on the back, so it's not a bad design to have it there.

Nomaan

They should use Qualcomm sense ID if it works great

Kiryn Silverwing

And that's the exact reason why I could never use an LG phone.

jonathan3579

I'd love for them to do something akin to Huawei on the Mate 7 I believe it was? You don't even have to push the power button but just set your finger on the sensor and it powers on and unlocks the screen. This is, of course, if it cannot be embedded into the display somehow.

cadtek91

You should still have a hardware power, incase of boot corruption if you root or anything.

jonathan3579

The Mate 7 still has a hardware power button but it isn't necessary for it to be pressed to get the fingerprint scanner to activate/unlock. It was the first of it's kind in the phone market.

I use an xposed module to get double-tap to wake (and double-tap status bar to sleep) on my Z3 Compact and love the functionality, I'm glad they're building it in so people without LG phones can get it now without doing extra work!

MrTheenD

Double tap to wake feature is already built into your system, just go to settings-display and you will find a setting there.

Martin Obi

well... i use tap to wake on my nexus 4 with a custom kernel. battery life is worse, yes. but from my experience i'd say by only ~10% at the end of the day.
They'll disable the toggle in the settings for devices without the needed hardware - just like the ambient display for non-AMOLED devices.

LG has a separate circuit on their display and digitizer, which allows them to leave on touch detection while the screen is off. It's not possible for the nexus 5 to toggle them independently, but before the N6 came out Google and LG signed a cross-licensing agreement, so they were allowed to use that stuff.

Clubber

Yup. It sure does.

Already knew that, actually. That's why the next Nexus 5 should have the separate digitizer power connection.

Clubber

Also. A lot of companies must have licensed it from LG.

I see tons of phones with tap to wake nowadays. It's close to becoming ubiquitous.

wickets

so im a bit confused because tap to wake only really works (or is useful) if you have no notifications??

Alex

What?

mike shwilly

Deez Nuts

Total Faith

Last of what you said is true ;)

AAAA

My S4 is set up to turn off double-tapping a blank area of my screen
(Greenify), definitely convenient! (I don't have a lockscreen set up).

Total Faith

#Naice #don'tdestroythehomebutoon

dcdttu

Devour battery life on a Nexus 5? Lolipop itself does that just fine. I get about 12 hours out of it before I'm at 20%, and that's with a 2 day old factory image refresh.

Maybe my battery is going....

Stakoman

So you're telling me that's impossible to have that feature on my nexus5? :(

Phuong Hoang

After read the title I thougth that my Tap To Weak is finnally supported for my Nexus 6 but.. :(

muhasin rashid

guys, is double tap wake present in nexus 5..??

tonypony

Can these be enabled with final release of Android M on Nexus 6 without root?

Shenbaga Vinayaga Selvam

There is an application called Knock on !!!!! I hope it ll help Nexus 5 users... I tried many more apps from play store.. Knock on solved finally!!!